This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

Liberals taking the easy way out

Stéphane Dion's accelerated resignation is a just-in-time
correction of the Liberal Montreal mistake, not a solution to the
party's problems.

By James Travers

Tues., Dec. 9, 2008

OTTAWA

Stéphane Dion's accelerated resignation is a just-in-time correction of the Liberal Montreal mistake, not a solution to the party's problems.

Anointing another new leader, the third in five years, will immediately strengthen the official opposition for the political showdown that resumes with Parliament next month. It won't end the increasingly nasty power struggle between Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae or restore a badly diminished brand.

Rae's refusal to bow to pressure to step aside for Ignatieff guarantees tomorrow's caucus meeting will be contentious. More significantly, the decision to have a new leader in place in time for January's confidence votes means Liberals are opting for a quick fix.

Instead of using the leadership campaign for even superficial consideration of what it means to be progressive in the 21st century, Liberals will again leave it to a new leader to set their direction. Even if that's an enforced response to current circumstances, it risks reinforcing the suspicion that regaining power is the party's sole purpose.

Article Continued Below

Liberals have appealing reasons to move quickly: Last week's suspended crisis proved the party can't move forward with a coalition, or into an election, with Dion. But there is another reality demanding consideration. Liberals, past their prime by three elections and counting, have lost their capacity to make the tough decisions that define parties and inspire public confidence. It wandered away during the leadership struggle between Paul Martin and Jean Chrétien, was nowhere to be seen at the Montreal convention that chose Dion and remains an elusive presence in the process to pick his successor.

The hard truth is that taking the easy way out isn't working for the party that congratulates itself as the Western world's most successful. Since 2000, when Chrétien won his third and the party's last majority, Liberals, wracked by division and indecision, have watched haplessly, as 95 seats changed colour, mostly to Conservative blue.

Liberals misread that trend when they gathered in Montreal to replace Martin two years ago. Mistaking a progression for an anomaly, they assumed Canadians would regain their senses and re-establish the national equilibrium by turfing Stephen Harper for any leader Liberals deemed worthy.

Rather than a hurt-the-head choice between the two strongest, if imperfect, candidates, the party ignored the available evidence to choose Dion. Delegates persuaded themselves voters would gravitate to a leader who struggled in the official language of most voters, hadn't convinced caucus colleagues who knew him best that he was up to the job and, foreshadowing last week's videotape fiasco, couldn't deliver his convention speech on time.

True, much of the blame rests with Rae and Ignatieff. Then as now, two old friends who are also testosterone rivals couldn't shelve ego and ambition in the interests of a party in desperate need of competent stewardship or a country in equal need of a viable alternative.

It's not clear how much Liberals have learned since. Even after a disastrous election they allowed Dion to dangerously delay his exit and then followed him into a coalition he conceived in hasty response to the Conservative threat to party funding and then executed with suicidal incompetence. Now Ignatieff and Rae seem more interested in finding the winning formula for themselves, not the process that will make it easiest for their party to make a hard choice

Even if time is of the essence, decisions of the utmost importance demand the wisdom, and legitimacy, that come with discipline and patience.

James Travers' column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

Delivered dailyThe Morning Headlines Newsletter

The Toronto Star and thestar.com, each property of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, One Yonge Street, 4th Floor, Toronto, ON, M5E 1E6. You can unsubscribe at any time. Please contact us or see our privacy policy for more information.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com